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In 1965, Vietnamese reporter Pham Xuan An went to work for Time. A tireless writer, with an unerring sense for facts amid the fog of war, An became an invaluable source of information for American readers. But he was also a spy for the North Vietnamese. In 2006, Thomas Bass profiled An in The New Yorker -- he joins us again to explain his subsequent reporting and the resulting book.
I fell asleep on the toilet this morning, fell on my face on the floor and gave myself a fat lip (usually someone else's job) and woke up (after reading about this day's Kabul government building suicide bombing) realizing that, while I don't think much of Taliban intelligence (either meaning), these Al-Qaeda people are often well-educated and very smart.
I hope stories about this spy don't give them any new ideas and, similarly, I do hope our intelligence services are monitoring our communications right here enough to pick up on the possibility I'm suggesting.
We Americans, as the British before us, tend to underestimate our "little brown brothers" and their ability to pull the wool over our eyes. Keep a vigilant eye, Mr. Ponetta and all your minions! Not all our "friends" are friendly.
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